Shattered Memories by the Hourglass
by 12th Master
Summary: Memory is a fickle thing, easily altered and turned around until the only thing you know is not to trust yourself. Yaoi, Yuri, and Het, along with violence and triggers. Not for the faint of heart. Warnings inside.


**Welcome to my first post, everyone! I'm the 12th Master as you can see and I don't really write that much fanfiction, so any and all reviews are appreciated and, as much as I am able, I will try to respond to them and address any questions you may have. So, don't feel shy about asking questions or correcting me on my grammar. Just a note, I have only read the Manga and seen the first Naruto Movie, so if you have any tidbits from the Anime or other movies that you'd like to say feel free! **

**This story is a teensie bit AU, in the way that I will be powering down the characters slightly as to make them more realistic (I know, I know, shouldn't be screwing around too much) As well as adding in a taking away certain things. Don't worry though! They'll still be plenty powerful. Also, there will be an****_ Original Main Character_****. A lot of people don't like that, so I'm letting you know now before you get mad and tell me to go die or something. I'll repeat this again later for all you too lazy to read this note. There will be information about stuff in my notes, as well as a bit of humor. Nothing required to read, and it'll all be revealed as we get further into the storyanyway. Sorta like an incentive for all you awesome folks out there to listen to me ramble. Or read it, I guess.**

**Any who, I am Canadian, so the spelling and measurements may be a bit screwed up for any of you lovely Americans or any other country that doesn't use metric. I also have trouble with directions, spelling, and grammar, and I haven't obsessively memorized every detail of everything ever, so let me know if I screw up! **

**There is going to be heavy stuff in this story. Rape, murder, suicide, gender identity, sexuality, depression ect ect. I'll try my best to cover all such things in a believable and realistic way. That does means there may be triggers! I'm not going to brush it off as attention seeking teenagers, I'm going to tackle it they way it is to the teens that struggle with these things, and I'll do so to the best of my ability. If you struggle with anything at all and feel brave enough to tell me about, please do! I'll listen, I won't judge, and I might even be able to help if that is what you want. HOWEVER! Do not think I'm a specialist. I'm just a teen, like you guys.**

**There are a few rules. One- If you protest on my plot, spelling, or grammar in a hateful way, please make sure that your message is correct in its spelling and grammar. Two- There is to be no hatred on the LGBTQ community as there will be girl-on-girl, boy-on-boy, Trans identified, confused sexuality, complicated gender and attraction roles and such. I'll explain everything as best I can! Three- Feel free to recommend me to a story, ask me to promote one, an author, or whatever, but pplleeaassee don't hand me to one that's typed out in -Liek and than they totes kissed becuse dey be hawt and such- because no.**

**Basically be nice and feel free to do whatever you please! The story portion put on this chapter is not so much a chapter, rather an introduction and is such a bit letter heavy. Don't worry! It'll lighten up maybe sometimes! And the next chapters will be longer, I promise!**

**Enjoy!**

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**Disclaimer: _Naruto _is a of fiction by Masashi Kishimoto, who I can only ever dream of being able to beat, in both plotlines and drawing ability.**

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**THERE IS AN OC MAIN CHARACTER! DON'T LIKE IT? TURN BACK NOW!**

It was loud, a torrential, _vile_ sound of gongs and blood. Ringing echoed and horrible clouds muffled her ears while the wails and shrieks of agony pervaded her skull, muscles sliding with a smooth oiled rubber noise, nerves popping sharply like TV static. She was hearing her nervous system react as she clawed at her face, desperately shutting off her ears as best she could heartbeat thundering and lungs filling like empty balloon sacs-

And it fell quiet. Well, quieter. It was never quiet for her, but this was manageable. Someone had bound- she shifted and listened as her hair brushed the fabric- cotton-fiber cloth, most likely t shirt material, around her head and ears before pressing silencing runes into the fabric. High quality ones, and familiar. Greatly the same as they had always been.

"You good?"

The voice was husky and boyish, coarse from what sounded almost like cigarette damage. But it was... off. Her eyelids flew open and she stared at him in near hyperbolic shock. He chuckled and scratched at now smooth skin.

_'Jeezus. Wh-uat happppenneded?'_ The electronic voice sprang up strong as ever from her wrist cuff, each word catching on the speakers as the device read what words would have passed by her lips if not for her extra-sensitive hearing. The sound of her vocal cords vibrating was not a pleasant one.

"Exactly what we hoped for and didn't want." the boy sat down and she pushed herself up. The room was a smoking mess, with the two of them propped up on one another amidst the remains of a bed. She glanced over to see the miniature form of her comrade, golden olive skin shiny from sweat and pain, clean like the war had never happened. Diminutive, but still well built with broad shoulders and strong arms, large hands pushing back spiked hair that never gave up on giving him a porcupine cut even when he was too tired to stand. And his eyes...

When they had first met they had been bright, a mix of pewter, sky, and cerulean hues, but as they traveled they grew less noon sky and more midnight. Until one time of which there was no going back. One refracted back, beautiful on its own, however it had a silvery cloud of sparkled that shifted in the iris like it was water, the pupil erased. The other was dark as sapphires with small flecks that glowed blood, copper, and rose gold as well as a slit pupil.

She brushed a hand across his cheek, both lacking the scars that had once called the flesh that lay there home.

_'We ee have may made it. We ee are unchannged. Merely younger, however our physical shells are all that has as beeeen altered. We ee are still here.'_

He grinned.

She grinned back.

And then they both burst out into laughter, shaking and sobbing and screaming. She was silent but the emotions running through her were just as loud as the ones running through him.

Happiness- they were alive. Shock- they were children again. Hope- they could change things. Anger- why now? Why not before? Fear- how could this happen?

They didn't do anything for the next few minutes except run through every emotion humanly and demonically possible, every single one they could bear before breaking further than the few pieces of porcelain left behind.

_'Whe en are we ee?'_

The robotic voice echoed out. It was night time, The echoes of thousands of sleeping breathes a familiar feeling, a comforting taste. Her cuff suddenly felt heavier than the ten kilograms it was. _I don't want to know. I can't take it if we messed up._

"Farther back than intended. We were aiming for what- when I was fourteen or so? We ended up in my academy years."

A whoosh of air left her. This was better. This was what they needed- a chance to help people before the hatred set in, not when it was already too late.

_'Thank the godde eh esses.'_

He grinned, then caught himself and touched his face lightly "How long has it been?" _since I last smiled? Since I heard you laugh? Did we really change so much?_

The unspoken words hung in the air.

She glanced away and stood up_ 'We ee need to plaa an. Nd put on clothes.'_ The cool night air had had enough time to kiss her bare skin, and they couldn't stay naked forever.

He chuffed, stood as well and crossed his arms shaking. "Jesus, you'd think enough time in the arctic and the cold here wouldn't bug me. You seem fine as always."

She smirked back and turned to his closet, grabbed the first things that she touched and began to pull them on.

It felt odd to be so small again. She was perhaps seven years old, nearly five feet. She hated being so short. Her arms and legs were just as disproportionately long now as when she was a teenager, so that was nice. She didn't have to school her gait. He on the other hand was darting forward from closet to dresser over and over to get used to his new size. It was like they had been redrawn for a new comic, and she was the lucky one whose design was finalized by the original artist while he got a newbie.

Speaking of drawing, her tattoos were mostly gone, leaving only the marks of her first designs scattered over places where scars should have removed them. She needed to get some ink and needles. Hell, she needed new art stuff in general. A least she was over the awkward experimentation with new brands stage. She could skip straight to her preferred supplies.

_'Shopp ppop popping tomorrow. We need new shit. Clothes, books, a piano for you and pencils for me..."_ She had started drawing to train her eyes, since trying to hear was like learning to drive with a nitro engine. Her comrade had started in music for the same reason- to get off his eyes and his nose.

She glanced down. Dirty, torn, orange shirt and filthy ruined cargo pants. She wasn't wearing underpants, her ivory skin was glowing and her hair was greasy and strung together, knee long and not quite as dark as it should be. She had ink and magpie hair, not jaguar. She pressed her middle and index fingers together and flexed. Her claws extended to nearly three inches long, shorter than remembered, and hacked through her hair as best as she could, leaving a mop of dirty hair hanging around her head and covering her face except for her chin and mouth.

She was long and slender, pale with black hair and a single black eye with small shards of bright silver that caught and reflected light like a mirror. Her teeth were a cross between canid and feline in nature- shaped wrong for a cat, but too long and dainty for a dog. Her eyes were large and tilted, mouth bow shaped and curled mischievously, ears pointed and no longer pierced. She had a lot of body modifications to catch up on.

Her friend was the afternoon sun, eyes smaller and squinted, keeping his left closed liked her own missing eye, the drug-silver blue eye to conspicuous. His own teeth were vulpine in nature, ears far more pointed and his claws permanently out. His hair was gold near the roots but faded into blood at the tips, as long as her new haircut was, and only about he was only 4'3 in height. Maybe taller, she was bad at these things. Very bad, so bad that once she guessed a fire was a kilometer away when it was really just a hundred meters.

A third heartbeat entered the room. Then a fourth and a fifth.

The warm feeling of pure energy slid around her skin like massage oil. Her power had finally returned, her Touch, her Unsense, her Current. Her beautiful paths twined along her and slid into her flesh and settled in her veins.

Her comrade relaxed likewise, chakra and paths returning to their rightful place in his body. It seems their hard-earned reserves were not returned to youth like their flesh. They could keep going from where they had left off.

"All is right now." he grinned, flexed an arm and turned to face her.

She turned and looked at him carefully, before hacking her shoulder-length hair down further, baring her neck. Her bangs hung as heavy and long as ever, and she smirked before tilting her head away.

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The two kids that entered the shop walked oddly, the shopkeeper mused. The one- blonde or ginger he couldn't tell even with his glasses on- bent over at the front, occasionally brushing a knuckle on the ground. Like an animal. The other one, the black haired boy that desperately needed a better haircut slid through movements like a cat. He (she maybe? In this light he could never tell) never started or ended a step or flick of the wrist, instead just oiling through one long stride.

The moved like ninjas, the Inuzuka ones when they teamed up with their dogs. Like humans with an animal's skeleton.

They puttered around his shop absentmindedly, a lesser rate ninja shop that ran twenty-four hours a day for ninja needing last minute basic supplies or cheap beginner stuff for academy kids. The two of them collected a set of kunai and shuriken and a few sets of clothes and ninja ration bars. The black haired boygirl smiled at him sweetly after he rang up the purchases.

"That'll be six-hundred and forty eight ryo, sweets." He smiled nicely at the kid "Where's your parents? It's not safe 'round here at this time of night."

"Oh, well you see." The blonde boy trotted up "It's not safe anywhen or anywhere for us." He smiled, displaying a mouth full of sharp teeth. The shopkeeper took a step back. The scars that had once carved his cheeks so impishly now ran jagged lines from face down to collar bones. The demon brat was finally looking like one. "Don't be scared, there's no point in giving yourself a nightmare over something you're not gonna remember anyway."

The last thing he saw was a flash of copper.

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_'Doo you eve er feel bad about anything we do? We just robbed a shopkeeper. We ee are going to rob another one in a minute.'_

He glanced over to his comrade. "God no. We'll save this place. We'll save it and we'll stop the bad things from happening. Nothing else matters."

She didn't say anything for a moment._ 'I wannted to die. I was ready to o die.'_ She paused again. _'Caan you oo feel it?'_

"...Yea. I can." He kept walking. "But it'll be okay."

_'It caan never be okay. Don't lie. Don't forget it is _my_ heart bea eating in your chest."_

"I'll never forget." He rubbed his whiskers "And I'll never lie. Not to you."

She looked at him.

_Ta thumputter dut thump put._

_'I believe you.'_


End file.
